Chapter 5: Luis

I watch as they shoot my father, as she rounds the corner. The bodyguard, her gun drawn, and her bullets, deadly, accurate, too late. Then she races to my father's side and falls to her knees. He's dead. She looks up at me, fear in her eyes. Not sadness, not grief. Shock maybe. Doesn't matter. I don't know her relationship with the old man, and now, I don't care. He ruled her, dictated every move she made. A deadly, trained and beautiful viper. She lived under his shadow, she needed him. But now he's dead and she belongs to me. I won't give her a chance to flee.

Our other men have arrived, minutes too late. Lena doesn't notice. I nod to my cousin, Arturo, then to Lena. He slams his fist into her head, and she crumples. A vision. Someone I'm hungry for, someone I can't get out of my mind. But not right now. Later.

Arturo frees me as more men arrive. I have no time to grieve for my father. Arturo picks up Lena and carries her to the waiting car. Throws her in the back seat. "Restraints," I say. "Tight. Make sure her weapons are taken."

My other men come out shaking their heads at the death of our patriarch, head of the family. This assassination of my father cannot go unpunished, but Lena has killed all the men, so there is no one to question. No one to hold accountable for this crime against my family.

And we cannot linger. The shots will call attention to us. We quickly leave, my father's body in another car, Arturo and I in the back seat of a car with the unconscious bodyguard. She's soaked in the blood of the men she killed. Her hair is pulled down, her body crumpled. Such a small woman for someone so lethal, I think as I examine her. Arturo does too, brushing some stray hair from her face. Running the back of his hand down her cheek. He looks at me. "We should fuck her, Luis."

I nod. I have every intention of doing just that. Locking her up in a cage and fucking her until I use her up. And then killing her. Arturo can have her too, if that's what he wants. She failed my father. She let him be killed. Now she will pay with her body, then her life.